We often come across people making beautiful work, photographers telling amazing stories, and people starting projects that push the boundaries far beyond those of the established. One such project, created by photographer Joshua T Gibbons, is Home Process. Supporting the continued use of analogue photography, Home Process is far more than just a film development service. From exhibitions to selling cameras, and even their own football team, working in both local and photographic communities. Then There Was Us is proud to support Home Process, we caught up with Joshua T Gibbons to discuss how it all started out and things to come. Visit Home Process to see all their services and events.

Words By James Wrigley
Photography By Joe Magowan & Home Process

Tell me about Home Process, how did it all start and what is your background in photography?

Well, working with analogue Photographic techniques in my own practice for many years and paying what can only be termed as exploitive prices to process film, I taught myself to do my own. After a few years of doing that, I then decided to invest in further equipment and start a business that would support the continued use of analogue Photographic techniques in Britain by creating an affordable film processing service for everyone!

Whilst I still do some very selective commercial photographic work, my first love is and always will be documentary portrait photography and as anyone working working within that field will tell you, unless your the Alec Soth there is zero money in it! So, to put it crudely, Home Process is my bread and butter that allows me to continue working in documentary so I don’t end up working weddings or ending up a product photographer at ASOS.

You have had a lot of work come through Home Process, what have been some of your favorites and what do you think about a lot of the work you see?

Well, we’ve an absolute tonne of work that comes through our business from holiday/travel photography to high end fashion and long form documentary photography amongst many other genres. From a purely selfish perspective though, I love seeing all of the amazing documentary portrait photography passing through our scanners and processors. It’s amazing to see how many people are currently working within that area but it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise with the hugely tumultuous period in which British society currently finds itself and I’m extremely proud that Home Process is able to support that exploration, if only in a small way.

I am particularly fond of one our clients work at the minute, the incredible Joe Magowan who is working within documentary portraiture and street photography. His ability to create such tender yet raw imagery within moments of meeting his sitters, usually on the street is a real testament to his disarming character and fantastic abilities as a photographer.

Image : Joe Magowan, Country New CrossImage : Joe Magowan, Country New Cross

You’ve set up bi-monthly exhibitions [The Copy Collective], sell cameras, and you even have a small football team, Home Process is becoming much more than just film processing and it seems that community and collaboration are extremely important to you?

Well, as Home Process has seen an awful lot of success in a very small period of time through our film processing service and our online camera store, we were keen to immediately invest some of our profits into community outreach initiatives. The first being The Copy Collection, an pop-up exhibition series which allows under represented photographers to show work under shifting themes every other month in one of Europe’s busiest creative districts, Shoreditch at zero cost to the artist.

For our second instalment of the exhibition series, with World Cup 2018 on the horizon we decided to make the theme football related which inspired us to launch our football club, HP Finchley F.C.

The club, which operates out of the same area as Home Process, in East Finchley aims to give local youth a chance to play football twice a week, free of charge as a means to provide a form of positive activity within the area, something local and national government has zero interest in doing. With Wembley looming on the horizon of our home pitch, the club competes in a local 6 a side league affiliated with the FA and a weekly 8 a side friendly that serves as training, fitness and socialising.

We’re also actively seeking further collaborations such as our recent one with Classic Football Shirts to continue raising the profile of HP Finchley FC.

What’s next for Home Process?

In the not too distant future we plan to also release a series of video tutorials on photographic retouching, bookable film processing workshops with myself and we are also developing a Home Process app which will streamline the postal film processing element of our business making it as straight forward as possible. We are also planning marketing drives via touring The Copy collective alongside presentations and workshops in the hopes we can reach out to more parts of the country and spread the word of our national postal film processing service. Expect a pop up exhibition near you in early 2019!